Compassion wins against dysregulation.

I am on the BART. About 30 ft from me is a doppelgänger of Ashton Kutcher from That 70s Show with a refreshing twist inspired by George Michael, he is wearing a long silver earring in one ear.

Our eyes meet. He stares. I stare back. We keep staring. Suddenly we are in a stare down. Both spontaneously determined to not look away. My determination comes from my ongoing practice to not collapse in the face of dysregulation , anger, basically fight energy coming towards me. This is an attempt to work through freeze in my system, which makes it hard for me to 1. assert my boundaries especially around men where there is sexual charge present and 2. hold the expansive charge of arousal/orgasms without collapsing.

I coach myself - “breathe and ground as you look”. Immediately he looks away. I feel surprisingly happy at this sudden victory against Ashton Kutcher.

A few seconds later while I was still enjoying the first victory, again my eyes catch him staring at me. He wants a redo. He is much bigger in size. But I am determined, so the stare down begins again. This time I can feel his resolve. I feel some aggression in his stare. I coach myself again - “Open the heart and send him compassion through your gaze”. I do that. The meeting of aggression and compassion is new to hold between us, I feel my being soften. I breathe. Ground into the earth more. And then I feel his aggression dissolve and seconds later he looks away.

I won. Again. I could not believe it. I was not looking to win. I was just going about life and life put me into stare downs with Ashton Michael. And also coached me to win.

This few minutes of exchange taught me the following -

Predator is not just the energy of fight. It can also be molded into compassion and the power of standing in a regulated grounded nervous system with compassion is stronger than a bigger body with a nervous system in fight.

Our essence is designed to be powerful. We are not designed to fight or fight, that’s a safety feature - we are designed to embody compassion to win over those who choose fight or flight even when there is no need for a war.

Dysregulation causes 99.9% of all conflicts, fights, wars, and violence between Homo Sapiens.